OT: Your Baseball Playing Days

[71buc]

I was an average player who loved the game more than it loved me. There are not a lot of places for 5'5" outfielders outside of Little League However, I was lucky enough to get a workout with the Padres in the mid 80's. That only served as confirmation of my mediocrity. It was a thrill nonetheless. I only wish I had realized that there were opportunies for a life in baseball that didn't require athletic prowess. At 38 I became an associate scout for the Reds and loved it. I had one of my guys drafted in my first year. It was exciting to hear his name announced and know I had a small part in it. I scouted for about five years for the Indians, Reds, and Nationals. At one point I had an opportunity to go to the MLB scout school with the possibility of a part time paid position. However, due obligations to my family I could not afford it financially. I had a wife and four kids who liked to eat on a regular basis and enjoyed the creature comforts such shelter. I admire scouts who work long hours on the road out of love for the game. They are under paid and often disrespected by the organizations they work for. Twelve years later I wonder if I should have said what the f**k and rolled the dice.

[I Only Smoke 4 the Cards]

My fondest memory from a game was my last play in high school. I stole second. There were bigger moments but that was my favorite.

[Tom Hufford]

I played for my hometown Pulaski (VA) Phillies for a few seasons in the late 1960s-early 1970s. I enjoyed it - but knew there was really no future as a Rookie League ballpark organist. Now, the best I've been able to determine, I am the only in-the-park live organist in the 100-year history of the Appalachian League, and really doubt there will be another! I really enjoyed meeting and knowing people such as Dallas Green, Wally Moses, Elmer Valo, - it was my first experience with professional baseball.

[frankbmd]

I was a catcher who could hit the long ball, but was slow afoot. I could have been called me "THE GREAT WHITE CAMPANELLA HOPE"

My short career ended in 1958, like "Campy", when I hit the ball over the outfield fence and still got thrown out at third base. Yes I was that slow.

My handwriting continued to deteriorate, like Campanella's after the accident. I passed the prescription writing test with flying colors, so I ultimately went to medical school. During my residency I actually worked at Wrigley Field for the Cubs in 1977 taking care of both the players and the fans during home games.

Cub regulars with bumps and bruises could always stay in the game. Visiting stars and semi-stars were always sent to the hospital for precautionary Xrays. It was my call as part of the job. I may have saved a few games for the Cubbies that year, but never appeared in the box score.

[toppcat]

I was your classic "no field, no hit" catcher and peaked in Little League at age 12.

[Leon]

There is actually one board member who remembers when I played little league as we played together. I won't go into my not-so-good childhood but my one play I will never forget was in our Little League All Star game as we were playing to go to the state Championship in Texas. I think it was 1974. I believe it was our Regional All Star game. We win that one and we go stay for a week in Waco at the Texas State Championships. I was a pitcher during the season and pitched half of every game and another player pitched half of every game. Our team went 19-2 and we won on our league. Our whole infield made the All Star team. It was a great season.
At any rate in that one All Star game, in an early inning, I was playing right field and a grounder was hit to me. The game was 0-0. The ball got by me and went to the fence. The guy got an inside the parker on my error. He missed 3rd base and we got him out. It was still 0-0. In the top of the last inning, with the score still 0-0 I had a ball hit to me, it went right over the first baseman,s head, bounced in and then bounced out.....it was a fair ball. I ran over to it, picked it up and turned without looking and nailed the guy going to second. I will never forget that throw or our manager saying " Big League play Luckey, Big League play!!". IN the bottom of that (last) inning we got a run on an error and won the game. That week of being in Waco with the rest of the team and getting to play a few games there (we were #4 or #5 in the state that year, after it was said and done) were the best times of my baseball career. I ruined my arm throwing way too many curves and didn't play a lot after that.

[peterb69]

I was a power hitting 3rd baseman & 1st baseman. Played hardball from little league thru high school. Even went to Ted Williams Baseball Camp and got Ted's autograph. George Brett was (is) my idol.

Then after college, I played in many softball leagues, 3 times a week to my wife's chagrin.

Haven't played anything but strato-matic baseball the last 15 years. But I will be 51 tomorrow, and Cape Cod has a great Old-Timers softball league where you must be 55 & older. So that gives me 4 more years to get back into playing shape.

Geez I love baseball.

[itjclarke]

I have many many good memories from my playing days, but most only have significance to me. I was a lefthanded pitcher and 1st baseman throughout my life (though did play everywhere/anywhere else... even the left side of the infield early in HS).

During those years, I was lucky enough to cross paths with a few future MLBers, and one memory stands out. I was 14 and pitching in "senior leagues" against 15 year old Eric Byrnes' (later of the A's and DBacks) team. Earlier in the game, he'd gotten stuck in a run down and being the man child he was, just ran over our 13 year old first baseman.. I remember it being dramtic like Albert Belle v Fernando Vina c 1996, but I'm sure it wasn't that bad. Anyway, when he was due up later in the game, my coach told me, "I don't care what else happens, you hit that m**her f**ker". I dutifully went out, threw two butt high fastballs right at him. He jumped out of the way both times.. then laced my next pitch into left field for a double. That was the first and only time I'd ever been ordered to hit someone.

Originally Posted by I Only Smoke 4 the Cards

My fondest memory from a game was my last play in high school. I stole second. There were bigger moments but that was my favorite.

I wish I ended HS career on a better note, but I simply flew out to right field.. I think I had tears in my eyes. I wanted to play college ball, but never developed into a D-1 player.. maybe in part because by my latter HS years I was focusing more time on football and just sort of hit a plateau baseball wise. I did play a few years in a hardball league after college, which was great... and still have hopes of putting the cleats again and playing in the old style (1890's) league that plays in Golden Gate Park.

[steve B]

I was really bad at baseball - Never got out of the lowest little league, which became T-ball a couple years after I became too old. Couldn't hit much, couldn't catch, and I'm about as slow a runner as you'll find. I just didn't get much in the way of large motor skills until partway through Highschool.

I did end up being a fairly decent catcher for modified pitch softball. Mosyly on durability. I'd played a few positons, some ok, some disastrously. (Infield no, not a good idea. I'm right up there with Chico Escuela.) The one game the regular guy decides to leave his ankle on the plate as someone is scoring. Broken ankle, and pretty much done altogether. Standard backup guy takes a foul ball in a rather unfortunate place two innings later. So I became the catcher. Totally messed people up by eventually abandoning the shin guards and chest protector. (It was modified pitch, now windmill, and no big arch, hardly anyone could get a pitch over about 30, although a couple I think were in the low 50's.) Did just fine for 3 years unil the club stopped having a team.

Being so slow, I'm pretty proud of my two triples. Both very hard hits, one 250+ but on a field with no fence, The second a line drive the outfielder ducked like a pitcher, but on a field with a fence. The rest of the time I'd pretty much look like a swing for the fences guy in BP then went for singles in the game since they'd back up and leave a lot of room.
Those of us with little actual talent have to be sneaky.

Steve B

[HexsHeroes]

.
It was our team's first round game in the Michigan Little League World Series. Top of the 1st inning, I am playing Left field, and batting fifth in our line-up. Deep fly ball to left and I go back, back, back, and leap upwards with glove raised to snare the ball. Ball meets leather, my face meets the top rail of the the outfield chain-link fence, and ball pops out of glove on the opposite side of the fence for an opponent's home-run. I recoiled from the impact, head bent down, spitting blood. Lacerated the inside surfaces of both lips, but no broken teeth. Unfortunately, I had to be removed from the game immediately. Sat the bench the rest of the game, watching my team lose 1-0 to the team that would go on to win the Michigan Little League World Series, and advanced to the regional Little League qualifier (where they would lose).

That was forty years ago, but I still can remember it clearly, like it was yesterday.

[pitchernut]

My one year of playing some sort of "organized" baseball. We could barely get enough players and there was only 6 official school uniforms. This was a international school in Japan and as a high school team we were usually beaten by Japanese junior high schools and forget about playing the Japanese high schools....

[MooseDog]

Grew up in Oakland in the 1970s with its great history of baseball. I was a terror in the local Japanese baseball league but also a bit of an outcast since I was only 1/2 Japanese. For some reason my parents didn't get me into the local Babe Ruth league where everyone else in the city played.

Had to try out for the high school, and made the team as a pitcher. Coach years later confided that he figured with my control I could throw batting practice, which is what I did pretty much my sophomore season.

We had a very good high school team. In my soph season I only got in 7 innings, usually when we were way ahead and coach didn't want to waste any of our "real" pitchers. I had great control and a Barry Zito curve but probably wouldn't have hit 90 on the radar on a good day with a fast gun and the wind behind me. Luckily our catcher was an extremely smart dude and knew most everyone's tendencies. He basically told me what to throw and where to throw it so I did. He knew how to work the strike zone too. I can't tell you how many guys we struck out with pitches a foot off the plate because of his ability to "frame" the pitch.

I remember one game against Oakland Tech I struck out the side in the last inning and it was their three best hitters, one of whom was a guy named Rickey Henderson, yeah that one.

That summer, my coach convinced the guy who ran the best summer league team for high school age players to take me on. While he did, he never intended to let me play and I never got to play all summer until our elimination game in the State Championships when we ran out of pitching. I think he was hoping I'd quit but I loved baseball too much and was learning a lot just being around all that talent.

Of the 20 players on the team, two signed and left during the season (Henderson and his best friend Fred Atkins - if you saw Rickey's HOF induction speech he credit's Fred for keeping him real), and 7 others eventually signed pro contracts with two ultimately having MLB careers - Henderson and Lloyd Moseby (Blue Jays and Japan).

In my Junior high school season I was slated to the be the 2nd pitcher and probably start against the two weak teams in our league. However our star pitcher ran into "academic difficulties" not to mention being out of shape. Coach asked our catcher if he thought we could get by with me and he said yes. Eventually the star pitcher ran out of chances and got kicked off the team. We easily won the league that season and I made the all-city team. I won 11 of the 15 league games (2 losses) and had a one-hitter to boot.

Senior year didn't go so well as my catcher had graduated and we couldn't find anyone to replace him. I mean, it was bad, guys who couldn't even catch the ball let alone throw anyone out. The only two decent games I had were when Moseby volunteered to catch. I did manage to hit a HR, my only one in high school, in our last game.

Something happened to my shoulder when pitching to kids during my summer job and it was never the same, so that was that.

Started coaching and won two city championships with mostly kids from my neighborhood and their friends. Moved up to summer league high school and formed a traveling team. Had some success and one player made it up for a cup of coffee with the Giants and is in the 1993 Topps set. Could never get a sponsor for the team though, and by the mid-1980s I was broke, unemployed and dealing with depression so I stopped.

It was all great fun though.

PS. The Rickey story always brings a "yeah, right" from most people. I used to have the scorebook from that game as proof - I asked my coach (I later became assistant baseball coach at the high school) if he still had the book from that year when Rickey got called up by the A's - but in one of my many moves it got lost.